“L-3 Communications Holdings Inc. (LLL) ticked up its 2014 revenue guidance but cut its per-share earnings and margin expectations as its aerospace segment, which is undergoing an accounting review, is expected to get hit by charges.”

Kristina Hooper, U.S. investment strategist at Allianz Global Investors said investors are still digesting the GDP number and the FOMC statement from Wednesday and are nervous ahead of the monthly jobs data.

“Markets love certainty and right now there is too much uncertainty about the Fed’s trigger points for raising rates. Instead of looking at one number, such as the unemployment rate, the Fed is looking at a mosaic of data points.

Investors are unsure what the Fed would consider a tolerable level of higher inflation. They are also unsure when the Fed would consider the labor market as void of slack.

On Friday, investors will pay close attention not only to the headline number in the jobs number, but also to the wage inflation, a number of part-time workers versus full-time, a percentage of long-term unemployed.

Losses on Wall Street are deepening and the S&P 500 is at 1,945, an important level of support according to technical analysts.

Sam Stovall, equity Strategist at S&P Capital IQ in a note wrote:

From a technical perspective, U.S. equities are sending mixed messages. The S&P 500 remains in an overall bullish position, while it stays above support at 1944-60, with the ascending trend channel defining the larger upward trend.

However, small-cap stock action, as well as overall market breadth, continue to signal a warning for the market. A move over 1169 for the Russell 2000 would be a near-term victory for the bulls and point to additional upside.

Below 1140, however, we give the odds to the bears and downside action. Separately, gold is again testing support at 1287-95. We continue to project rotational price action while this support remains intact, but think a move below 1287 would tip the odds in favor of the shorts, targeting 1233-58. Resistance remains at 1316-32.

The world is looking at Argentina, which didn’t make its bond payments Wednesday, the latest wrinkle in a years-long grudge match between the South American nation and its creditors. The situation continues to unfold, and investors continue to remains hopeful about a deal, but…

July is starting to look like that scene from the wedding at the end of season three of Game of Thrones. I won’t give it away, but all three indexes are now in the red for the month. Here’s the intra-month losses:

Small caps haven’t been faring so well in July either. A note from Steven DeSanctis, head of US Small Cap Strategy at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, highlights the following:

“July has been one of the toughest months in quite some time for small caps, as the size segment is down over 4% and lagging the large caps by nearly 500 basis points. This is a continuation of the full year’s performance in small, as the size segment is now 8.2% behind large caps (Chart 1). This year has the making of being the worst relative performance since 1998, an infamous year for small-cap investors. When small has performed as poorly as it has versus large, one would expect a bounce, but that was certainly not the case in 1998. In fact, when the first seven months are as bad as this, small continued to trail large by another 3.6%.”

“The problem was revenue of $476 million, which while above the FactSet consensus of $472.9 million, was within the company’s guidance of $464 million to $478 million.Morgan Stanley analyst Jennifer Swanson Lowe said bears may be picking at the fact that Akamai snapped its five-quarter streak of beating the high end of guidance. And when a stock has surged 29% year-to-date, or about four-times better than the S&P 500’s gain, that might as well be a miss.”

The CBOE’s Volatility Index – which often gets the nickname “fear index” — spiked on Thursday to its highest since mid-April. The VIX is up almost 20% on the day.

There’s a whole host of discussions about whether the VIX actually has any meaning, but we’ll leave that aside for now and just note that if the VIX isn’t showing investor caution, the major stock indexes certainly are.

MarketWatch’s Angela Johnson writesthat Bill Ackman gave a big old “my bad” to the folks at Bloomberg for his lackluster presentation skills. His “death blow” presentation about multi-level marking company Herbalife Ltd. /quotes/zigman/361145/delayed/quotes/nls/hlfHLF last week caused the stock to rally 25%, making it, well, pretty much the opposite of a death blow. To be fair, Herbalife stock didn’t retain much of the rise in share prices. Just look at the above chart.

But Ackman had this to say about the whole experience:

“It was a PR failure,” Ackman told Bloomberg. “I think we raised expectations. People were looking for the dead body and the smoking gun and instead what they got was a three-hour, detailed regulatory presentation.”

A click gets you some more factoids on just how bad this last day of July has been, courtesy of MarketWatch’s Victor Reklaitis. A preview for you chart-watchers out there:

“The S&P 500 has sliced through its 50-day moving average. The benchmark last closed under that level on April 15. The Dow also has undercut its 50-day line, and it hasn’t finished under that level since May 20.”

(For some background, crossing through the 50-day moving average generally suggests a down-trend in the intermediate term.)

Stocks are sharply lower on worries about the outlook for Federal Reserve policy. Chief investment strategist Doug Roberts at Channel Capital Research doesn’t expect Fed tightening, but we could see “increased noise from the hawks on the Fed.”

On Wednesday, Yelp Inc./quotes/zigman/9021597/delayed/quotes/nls/yelpYELP reported its first quarterly profit since going public more than two years ago. Not only did the online review aggregator move out of the red, but it reported an uptick in sales that also exceeded the estimates of Wall Street analysts.

So the Dow did indeed end up suffering its biggest single-day drop since Feb. 3 — both in terms of points and percentage.

Meanwhile, the S&P 500 (-39.40 points or -2%) endured its biggest single-day drop in terms of points since Feb. 3, but in terms of percentage, this was its worst drop since April 10, when it fell 2.1%.

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